RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR. THE UNION-TRIBUNEHispanics arriving as a political force

May 29, 2005

Almost 20 years ago, San Antonio Mayor Henry G. Cisneros – then one of the country's most prominent Hispanic officials – jumped the gun and proclaimed the 1980s "The Decade of the Hispanic."

OK, my people are not known for their punctuality. But eventually they arrive where they need to be.

Now, a half-generation later, a lot of people are saying that Hispanics have finally arrived. They serve in the top tier of the Bush administration – among them, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Surgeon General Richard Carmona, Treasurer Anna Cabral and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. And the prospect of a Hispanic on the Supreme Court seems closer than ever, especially if President Bush sticks to his promise to put one there before he leaves Washington.

Latin flavor has seeped into music, food, fashion, sports, film, television and popular culture.

About that, a former editor of mine couldn't be more pleased. While she isn't Hispanic, she has received a cultural transfusion. Raised in West Texas, she takes pride in the area producing the Grammy-winning Latin group, Los Lonely Boys. And it's not lost on her that so much of what is new and innovative in the music world has Latin roots.

"C'mon," she told me. "When was the last time you had a successful band come out of New England?"

Now, with two Hispanics in the Senate and with Hispanics among the most sought-after swing voters, America's largest minority is spicing up the normally bland world of politics.

Look at what happened in Los Angeles, a city that is now more than 47 percent Hispanic and where Hispanics outnumber every other ethnic group. Antonio Villaraigosa is soon to be sworn in as the first Hispanic mayor of the city in 133 years.

Given that this is the nation's second-largest city we're talking about, that means the 52-year-old former Assembly speaker has just arrived on the A-list of Hispanic political talent.

For Villaraigosa, who defeated incumbent Mayor James K. Hahn, getting there was half the fun. The candidate pulled together an impressive coalition of blacks, Jews, labor and progressive whites. That was an improvement over Villaraigosa's failed bid for the same office four years ago, when a black minister famously joked that African-Americans shouldn't vote for "someone whose name they can't pronounce." This time around, Villaraigosa got half the black vote.

But it was Hispanics who made the difference. The mayor-elect walked off with 84 percent of their vote. That added up in a hurry, given that Hispanics accounted for one in four votes cast.

Note to Democrats: This is the same group of voters that your party complains doesn't turn out often enough.

Democrats miss the point. It's not that Hispanics don't care enough to vote. It is that they don't care to vote for white liberals who take their votes for granted. Democratic Party leaders should look toward Los Angeles and take note. The party of John F. Kennedy had better get used to running more candidates like Villaraigosa – or get used to coming in second.

For now, it's fiesta time for Hispanics in Los Angeles. And why not? They earned it. The last time a Hispanic sat in the Mayor's Office in what was then a town of less than 10,000 people, Ulysses S. Grant was president and there were still plenty of Mexicans in California who, in the aftermath of the Mexican War, thought of their new living arrangement as the occupation.

Don't expect Villaraigosa to say anything that cheeky. Within hours of his victory – by a 20-point spread, no less – the former campus activist, civil rights lawyer and union organizer was mainstreaming it. Continuing a theme that he sounded in the campaign, he told reporters that he intended to be the mayor "for all of Los Angeles."

That's exactly what the mayor-elect should say, and it's a lovely sentiment. But it's also exactly what many non-Hispanics in Los Angeles were hoping he would say. In fact, according to one report in the Los Angeles Times, after the votes were counted, a white Democratic assemblyman was out reassuring his supporters of the same thing, that the new mayor – while Hispanic – would not simply use the office to serve only his own people.

That's the weird thing about trailblazers. They're always under pressure to maintain the status quo – even as they shatter it.